Earn money with price comparison / aggregators

Hi guys, how are you doing?
I'm an experienced (web) developer and I'm looking for a way to make some extra money... I made quite some websites and scripts in my spare time before, but what I didn't like that much was the support... You have to be quite cheap to compete and give quite some support at the same time. So lots of hours, and it doesn't pay very well at the end (except when you work for bigger companies, but often you have to work full-time for them).

So I just had an idea. I'm quite experienced in creating affiliate websites, especially the price comparison or aggregator websites. I even made the web scrapers myself and implemented the search / web filters on those websites (facets).

So I thought, perhaps I should create a website with tutorials (perhaps youtube tutorials as well) and share Github code with boilerplates to start such website. I have created them as well with Wordpress as NodeJS / Angular websites. I thought, as soon as I get some nice amount of visitors / subscribers, I could start earning money with ebooks / extra plugins / advertisements.

What do you guys think? Perhaps I should create a separate domain with youtube channel and twitter account for that as well.

throw in an easy installer and you got yourself a paid service. I think its a great idea.

Defeatenonce said:

throw in an easy installer and you got yourself a paid service. I think its a great idea.

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Nice idea! Have to think about which approach would be best, there are various options...
- a Wordpress plugin with search and web filters, for which you need a Product Key to use. This plugin provides ways to implement XML files with products for example.
- a service and the above plugin. The service provides faster and better search. I create the service so the user doesn't have to implement and create the complete search environment.
- a kind of docker image which provides everything (a website, back-end with various options, and also installs the search engine etc.), with small installation instructions.

Personally I like the last part, as a MVP.

I could provide a service which you can connect with your own domain as well.
So, you create an account, the style of your site, add links to the XML or RSS feeds with products (or connect webscapers, for the future), and set the DNS settings so you can connect it with your own domain for example. Guess this last idea could be a MVP as well, cheap / free for earlier users cause I will have few options then. And ask for more money for newer users in the future as the service grows.

It is a nice concept, but the problem you will have with any web business you start yourself is marketing. When you are new, nobody knows your name. You have to spend a fortune telling them and convincing them it is not a scam. Have you seen the cash burn rate on these aggregator sites and it is nearly all spent on brand awareness?

So have you considered developing apps, it is a lot easier and cheaper to market by comparison.

GringoMonkey said:

It is a nice concept, but the problem you will have with any web business you start yourself is marketing. When you are new, nobody knows your name. You have to spend a fortune telling them and convincing them it is not a scam. Have you seen the cash burn rate on these aggregator sites and it is nearly all spent on brand awareness?

So have you considered developing apps, it is a lot easier and cheaper to market by comparison.

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Thanks for your response. Well, I do have an idea for a small mobile game (Android). Guess I could give that a try. As far as I know it doesn't take much time to create it. The problem was I did not had the time before to actually build it, do got the assets though. But I'm able to build it much faster cause I don't have to install any infrastructure like Linux servers and such. Guess I will start build it tomorrow afternoon and see how that goes. I'll post it here somewhere on the forum if and when I finished it

Although easier do you have ideas on how your going to market the app?

GringoMonkey said:

Although easier do you have ideas on how your going to market the app?

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To actually get users, I will try free sources at first (twitter, facebook, reddit, etc.). I could try advertising as well. But most importantly, the user has to like the game enough to share it. I'll make it easy to share the game, using a share button. I'll show that button when the user is "Game over", next to the "Retry" button. The public leaderboard and simple concept makes it hopefully kinda "addictive".

The main character will be EDI, an android. I have two concepts, but I'll start with one.

If you would like to do a joint venture on an app send me a private message and we can discuss more. But you will need 15 posts here on bhw.

GringoMonkey said:

If you would like to do a joint venture on an app send me a private message and we can discuss more. But you will need 15 posts here on bhw.

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Thanks! Will think about it